Snakes on a Plate

I’ll usually try anything once, unless it’s heroin, murder, or a post plane crash Lynyrd Skynyrd album.

I went to a restaurant for dinner tonight. The village where I live only has three restaurants, and two of them are kebab shops. The place I went was a newly opened steak house just up the road. It used to be a pub, but it went out of business because the other pub in the village is closer to the kebab shops.

Anyway, I sat down with my family and perused the menu. Obviously I was going to have steak, because it was a steak house. But the starter options were a bit limited. I decided to have the garlic mushrooms because I don’t have any imagination.

But then the waitress told us about the specials. Most of them were intriguing but mostly in sausage form. I’d had reindeer before, and reindeer is delicious. However, our lovely waitress then said ‘oh, I forgot… we also have python as a starter.’

If someone offers you the chance to eat a python, you should take it— even if it is just so you can say you have. Also, you probably get all kinds of respect from pythons you encounter in future. There is something inherently flavoursome about chomping down on an animal that could kill you with ease were it still in one piece.

And, whilst it looks a bit disgusting, python tastes wonderful. It comes in little white chunks that reminded me of the episode of The Simpsons where Marge serves Mr Burns the three-eyed fish. The meat is very tough, but the trick is to cut small bites. It tastes quite a bit like fish, with a dry oily texture that is unlike anything I’ve ever tasted. Except fish, obviously.

I don’t know if it’s right to eat python. I suppose they’re not endangered, and it’s not like everyone goes around eating them, but still… I’ve become a little conflicted. I’m not vegetarian, and don’t have a problem with killing animals (although I prefer to leave it to professionals/industrialized warehouses). But most animals I consume are sort of bred specifically for that purpose— for consumption, because we need to eat to survive.

But we don’t need to eat python to survive, at least not in this country. I’ve only ever seen one live python, and that was at a zoo. The python I ate probably wasn’t bred on a python farm for consumption. He was probably just hanging out, minding his own snakey business when BAM, he gets caught and through no fault of his own ends up marinaded in lemon infused oil and devoured by a pathetic human.

If I’d been in a country where pythons lived naturally, and python is what people sometimes ate because that was the cultural norm I don’t think I’d have any problem or moral conflict at all. I probably wouldn’t have had the garlic mayo either, so it’s not all win-win.

This leads me to a more worrying thought that I might be turning into a hippy. I don’t know… and now all I can think about is Barry White urging the residents of Springfield to leave all the snakes alone…

Maybe we should though… maybe like, not eat every animal on the planet. Show a little restraint, unlike the guy who attempted to eat the 72oz steak. It’s kind of depressing seeing that much food go to waste, because nobody can eat that much steak. My steak was 10oz. I couldn’t eat seven and a fifth.

Also a bit depressing in the restaurant were tables surrounded by people, and most of them playing with mobile phones. And not in a sneering ‘I’m so much better than these tech obsessed cretins’ way. It’s just rude. More so when you start playing MP3s loud enough to compete with the music already playing.

Then again it’s rude to refuse when your hosts offer you monkey brains served fresh from the skull just like Temple of Doom. Social ettiquette can be hard to master.

It’s probably okay to eat python, as long as we don’t make a regular thing of it. It’s definitely not okay to be on your phone in a restaurant though. It shouldn’t really be on. Eating with friends and family at a restaurant should be joyous and fun and full of conversation, laughter, and alcohol. It’s brilliant, trust me. A meal is more satisfying when you’re not Tweeting every moment of it.

If you really want strangers on the internet you ate something cool just write about it on a blog later…

On a unrelated note, saw The Dark Knight Rises yesterday on an IMAX screen. IMAX screens take a bit of getting used to, and it probably isn’t worth the extra money but they are pretty awesome.

The Dark Knight Rises is probably the best of the trilogy. It is outrageously good. Michael Caine is outstanding, and somehow Anne Hathaway comes away as the best Catwoman of all time. Bane is terrifying, and there is nothing wrong with his voice. You can hear everything he says. Of course it sounds distorted/synthed— he’s talking through a mask. He sounds a bit like the Hedonismbot from Futurama doing a Sean Connery impression, and at one point actually accidentally quotes the Hedonismbot.

If you only do two things this week, make it a plate of python and a viewing of Batman…